LISA FALKENBERG, Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle |
April 5, 2010

As if, perhaps, the troubled Gulfton-area school's potentially toxic confluence of challenges — from the language barriers to the dropouts to student poverty, pregnancy, turnover and transience — was too much for even a 38-year-old rising star administrator to handle.

Students and teachers who learned last week of the talented young principal's decision to depart Lee, after only three months on the job, might understandably assume that Castro had assessed the situation and determined Lee's prospects for improvement hopeless.

“I wouldn't blame them if they did,” Castro told me in a phone interview Monday.

And he acknowledges the impact that jumping the HISD ship after 15 years to oversee KIPP's high school leaders may have on Lee students and faculty still reeling over the abrupt mid-year replacement of beloved former principal Steve Amstutz, who, despite unwavering effort, failed to improve the school's “unacceptable” rating.

“I think they feel abandoned, a second time. I feel very bad about being the cause of that,” Castro told me.

But Castro insists that his decision to leave, which he called a “tortuous,” was for personal reasons like career track and the lure of KIPP's positive, inspiring culture, and has nothing to do with Lee's unique obstacles. “It's just a different kind of challenge,” he said of Lee, “but not an insurmountable one. I still believe that.”

He seems sincere. Though, reading between the lines, it's clear Castro doesn't believe progress is possible in the current test-obsessed climate where accountability is a battle cry in an academic war fought on fields of data spreadsheets.

“I'm a huge fan of accountability,” he said. “I'm a data wonk. I love numbers. It only gets you so far.”

Not a typical failure

Progress at Lee won't happen, he suggested, without dramatic changes in the way the district and the state view the school and assess its performance.

“This is not a school that one person alone can change. It requires a systemic response,” he said. “It is very important for the district not to lose Lee in this turmoil.”

Lee isn't your typical failing school. In one campus, its students seem to personify every major socio-economic problem and demographic challenge facing urban schools today. At the same time, it's a petri dish for academic innovation, full of Stand and Deliver-type successes.

It's a place you have to see to believe, which is why it's so unbelievable that HISD Superintendent Terry Grier has chosen to make major decisions about Lee without setting foot on campus since he started in September.

40 languages spoken

Language is at the heart of the largely immigrant student body's struggles. Although Lee celebrates the more than 40 languages from around the world spoken among its 1,850 students, the number of students considered “English language learners” is 780, greater than the entire populations of some high schools.

In many cases, students are over age for their grade, were under-schooled in their native countries, or are illiterate in their home languages. In a few instances, the home language hasn't even been written yet.

“The amount of ground our students have to make up just to get to average is pretty tremendous. And that was not something I was ready for,” Castro said.

Each year, the student turnover among the highly transient population is an astounding 30 percent.

Yet Lee's performance is measured by the same standards and timetables as are the state's most stable, affluent schools. Its teachers are subject to the same methods of appraisal.

With a playing field so unfair, Castro said he was surprised to find such drive among many students and teachers to succeed. They do so, he said, despite that fact that they attend school in an aged, broken building that resembles a prison from the outside. The district has allowed part of the facade to fall in the grass. The city lets gang graffiti linger on nearby buildings.

“They're not numbers,” Castro said of the students. “They each have a story. Those stories are the story of Houston in 2020 and 2030. And any uneducated child who we let escape our system without every resource available to him or her is going to be costing us in the future.”

‘Maybe this is us'

“That is not something that can be the sole responsibility of a single principal and his or her staff,” he says. That is a state and city responsibility. That's not happening right now. We're treated like we're out there by ourselves, you know, on the hilltop. And if we just worked harder, this is going to work. In a lot of cases, there are people here until 8 or 9 o'clock every night, trying to work as hard as they can and not experiencing success. At some point the system has to say ‘maybe this is us.' People need to understand this is an ‘us,' not a ‘them' issue.”

Castro is staying until graduation in May. Whoever replaces him will face the same daunting challenges. The solutions are out there. They have to be. But no one person should be left to find them alone.